Hold
by ebonbird
Summary: Peacekeeper Tech Gilina Renaez is hung up on an alien she once kissed.


Spoilers: US Season 1: PK Tech Girl, Nerve, Hidden Memory.  
Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, except Tech Biliin Pao. Everyone else I'm using without permission but I'm not making any money from this.  
First posted 23 Jan 2000; revised 26 Jan 2000.

* * *

"Love like you've never been hurt."

Gilina Renaez, Maintenance Provost, Tranco Support Division, sighed and lay back on a bed. Held a pillow to her chest. Stroked the material. Imagined thick fine hair beneath her fingertips. Closed her eyes. Saw control boards, patterns of circuitry. Cables and join tubes. The occasional arc of light and the sliding in and out of circuits. Kissed the air.

Her back hurt. Across her shoulder blades. Where her neck met her shoulders. Just above her waist. There was a sharp pain in the arches of her feet and her knee felt weak. She'd been lying on the ground staring up at the inner workings of the Aurora Chair with her leg bent at the wrong angle for double-shifts.

Gilina didn't mind the double-shifts. The technology was amazing. The implications, she told herself, none of her concern.

Gilina clutched the pillow tighter. Hitched up her legs. Wondered if it were possible for a man's light hair to be the same color as his eyes, if they were light.

If she opened her eyes she would see gray. Gray undressed stone.

Gilina was used to warships, not biomechanoid technology. Matte metal. Burnished ceramics. Glossy lacquers of purest reds and blacks.

Gilina shivered. Raised a hand to her mouth. Kissed her skin. It did nothing for her.

A man's skin, as warm in color as the walls of a Leviathan, felt briefly beneath the edge of a gray, thin knit shirt, belonging to John Crichton, did something to her, almost a full cycle later.

She could no longer hear his voice in her mind. It was the first thing she had lost. The sense of his mouth a tactile memory worn thin by repeated pressing of her skin on hers, but his hold on her, how she'd been so small in his arms, how the falling apart of the Zelbinion had been nothing to the expansive moment between them, and his smile, oh, his smile, against her cheek, her mouth...

Death and danger and he was so gentle, so slow. As if nothing were needed, no urgency, other than the blue bright spark of heat between them.

Blue. His eyes had been blue.

John could have held her forever. She would have let him. He'd caught her up in strong arms before she'd realized she was falling.

Gilina opened her eyes. Sat up in her bed. Blinked around. Yanked the binding from her hair and shook the pale strands loose.

John should have been there, in her bed. Or better she in his.

If he still had one aboard Moya. If Captain Crais had not found him.

Gilina's wide mouth frowned. Disapproval etched her features.

After she left the Zelbinion Gilina studied the captain. Listened to rumours. Broke into his logs. Found a message from his superiors commanding him to abandon his search for Moya and the fugitives and leave the uncharted territories.

Gilina had believed that Captain Crais had killed his first officer. Resurrected deleted surveillance records from his quarters and learned it to be true. Shivering, Gilina had truly buried the evidence. Knowing that if someone else stumbled upon the ineptly hidden information they might be killed for their trouble.

Too many secrets, Gilina thought. I have too many secrets.

Did she dare reveal Crais to be the murdering rogue she knew him to be? Or would she be unjustly condemned, like Sun, to the living death?

There was no Crichton to hold her now. Make those who could, and wanted to destroy her, not.

John's arm had grazed the very top of her rear. His hand large across her waist. He'd squeezed her softly. Kissed her as if she were a pawa flower, ready to burst invisible at his touch.

Gilina lay back on her bed. Turned toward her door. Hugged her pillow tight.

She could go outside, retire to the mess. But she knew what would happen. She would look for John Crichton. See him in a distant officer or a broad-shouldered tech with his back to her.

Sway on her feet with ridiculous longing for a man dimly remembered.

Like today.

For a fraction of a microt, every few days, she thought she glimpsed John.

On the Zelbinion, she'd thought that if she'd looked into his eyes, she would have put herself on him, right there. She hadn't kissed him enough once she had kissed him; and as beautiful as his way with her had been, his eyes were probably more so.

Resolutely, Gilina pushed the thought out of her mind. She considered her tools. The current project. The correct order of assembly for the psycho-visual interface. Ways to manipulate it.

Small hands relaxed from around her pillow. Her unsupported head listed a little to the side of the pallet. She sighed.

Her sleep was dreamless.

Techs and warriors pursued distraction in the smoky, dim mess.

On the Gammak base someone was always on shift. Someone was always off. 

"Oy, Gilina!" called Biliin Pao, also of Tranco Support Division, "Drink with me."

Biliin pulled out a seat, and Gilina smiled. Sat beside him.

Biliin rubbed the small of Gilina's back for a fraction of a microt.

"He's impossible," Gilina groaned into her hands. "What he wants is impossible."

"I feel power cord patterns beneath this worksuit," Biliin said.

Forehead still in her hands, Gilina turned her face to look at Biliin's bland countenance, "How is it you spend half the time I do beneath that Aurora chair?"

"I don't care about anybody's work except my own," Biliin replied, "Chin up most driven and beauteous, Gilina."

She smiled.

"You'll be supervising the big projects any day now, and'll have people like me doing all the awkward work. You'll just oversee," Biliin waved his hand airily. A server passed with a tray, Biliin grabbed a drink. 

Gilina folded her hands across the top of the table. "You're very good."

"But you're the expert."

Gilina took a long drink. When she was done, Biliin was looking at her. Gazing really. Even with the dim lighting it was easy to see the intensity of his regard.

"What did I ever do to deserve you?" he asked. Touched her chin with rough fingertips.

"You don't have me, Biliin."

Biliin set his drink before her and waggled his eyebrows. "Once you're promoted, think you'll get a long wig to go with your new uniform, like Neim? Or a spiffy skull cap?"

Gilina ducked her head. Put her hands to hot cheeks and laughed. Shook her head. Heard a voice that filled her with hope. Scanned the crowd with burgeoning horror. Spied John Crichton.

Huddled in a crawlspace, listening to the tamp of Aeryn Sun running off in hunt of an officer, Gilina watched John.

His face was blasted with grief. The stamp of cynicism on his mouth. The arms that had caressed her wrapped in black and red leathers. Peacekeeper colors. And he stank from torture and fear.

He did not know her anymore, that was clear. He looked at her like he looked at all Peacekeepers, except Sun.

John gave her a wan half smile. Stared up at the grill.

"Do you want to be with her?" Gilina asked. 

"What?"

"Officer Sun, do you want to be with her?"

John reached for Gilina. Sweetly, he caught up her fingers in his hand. Held himself aloof with his eyes. They were unreadable, as cool as when she'd appeared to him and he'd glared through a gunsight at her. As distant as when she'd given him the paraphoral nerve tissue and had kissed his face.

Gilina let her fingers go limp with disappointment. Wished that she'd held onto him, and never ever let go.

She shouldn't have asked if John wanted to be with Officer Sun.

He already was.

-0-

* * *

Comments: Gilina reminds me of the real Little Mermaid. The one who gave up her life for the happiness of the man she loved.

The Gilina, Crichton, Aeryn interconnections remind me of the Betty, Archie, Veronica triangle. Betty never got Archie. On more than one occasion she fixed his bogota of a car, Tin Lizzie, so he could take Ronnie on a date.

I think one of the reasons the course of true love never did run smooth is because what it is is not what we think. And the permutations of love are what sometimes make life bitter, and sometimes sweet.

If this affected you, let me know.


End file.
